NLW

Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru - National Library of Wales : National Library of Wales:

"The National Library of Wales is one of the world's great libraries. Situated at Aberystwyth in west Wales, it is a legal deposit library, and holds the world's largest collection of works about Wales and other Celtic nations. It offers free access to its collections both on site and electronically.

The National Library of Wales contributes to the growth of interest in family history by:

• expanding and updating its range of sources regularly
• producing indexes to important sources like wills and marriage bonds
• publishing guides for the location of parish registers and Nonconformist registers
• disseminating information leaflets about its own holdings
• making its holdings more accessible through the computerisation of lists and indexes
• providing first-class facilities for family historians to do their research
• maintaining a list of independent researchers
• cooperating with similar institutions and family history societies

The National Library of Wales : Family History: " NLW is acknowledged as the principal centre for researching Welsh genealogy, and you are welcome to use its sources and facilities for researching the history of your own family."

Using the IGI for Wales and Monmouthshire: "Because of the late development of the use of surnames in Wales, where the uses of patronymics continued in many places until into the 19th century, the Welsh IGI has both a surname index (SN) and a given name index (GN).

Before 1813 parish registers did not make the surname explicit: The IGI assumes, in all cases before 31st December 1812, and of course wrongly, that the child took its father's christian name as its surname"